02:12 - 14.09.06
Spirals and DNA
Last night when I wrote about our society's failure with respect to our social fabric I mentioned Waco and Oklahoma City. I failed to mentioned L'ecole Polytechnique - the massacre of 14 females in December 1989 in Montreal because one male gunman felt that the faculty of engineering was not an acceptable place for women.
Today there was almost an exact echo of that homegrown hate crime played out at another junior college in Montreal. The age of the murderer is the same, but this time the motive isn't clear yet. This time there may not be as many deaths because police and bystanders had the previous tragedy to use as a measure of what they must do to protect the gunman's targets. One would think that the passage of 17 years would have reduced the reaction one had to that first crime but I cried as much about that long ago day as I did about today's disaster. You see the police learned and applied their lesson about how to respond to someone like the murderer but apparently our society hasn't yet learned how not to create so much rage in a person that they would shoot indiscriminately into a crowd of innocent people.
There has been so much attention focussed on our "missions" overseas in Afghanistan to stop the disinherited and those with nothing to lose from taking similar actions as a country but until we can address and resolve the same problems within our own communities it is unlikely that we have a chance of succeeding in an arena where there are one thousand people with the same psychological profile for every one of our "crazed murderers" like the one who exploded in Montreal today.
During the day I worked on the election assignment in between catching news clips as more information came in. Talked with another Returning Officer about some of our financial issues with both supplier and workers. Called some of the landlords who I found in the newspapers yesterday. So far only rejections - flat "nos" with no room for negotiation. I'll start the email pleas next but I wanted to try those with no websites first thinking maybe they might be more amenable to a short term lease. Misjudged that one. I still don't know how I am going to approach the wage issue with Ottawa since those amounts are legislated in parliament. However the issue has to be addressed before it is dissolved because of course, there will be no elected body to change the legislation then. Another catch 22.
I've been spending a little time every day looking at the mapping and demographic issues that are part of the assignment too but I need to go down to City Hall to pick up the hard copy data to support my decisions before I send that back in. That data just became available - it isn't even posted on their webstore yet - was the response I received from their staff in response to an email I sent a couple of days ago. That will help directly with the demographic assignment but should also help me explain the budget issues as well. As usual our city's electoral districts, population has been seriously underestimated by headquarters yet all our funding for running an office is tied directly to that number. Sigh.
The weather changed dramatically last night so that the word snow appeared in our weatherforcasters' vocabulary for the first time in months. It rained most of last night and today. Temperatures are about 10 degrees C lower that average whereas for the past several weeks it has 10'C higher. Moderation isn't something that happens much in weather here although in a wonky way it does balance out in the end. I was going to cut my lawn for the last time this year, but now I'll have to wait until the snow melts - once it falls that is - and the ground dries out a bit. The up side is that I can finally breathe comfortably because the rain washed away the smoke from the forest fires and the cooler temperatures meant I could manage a deep sleep for a change. I have a lot more energy as a result. Hopefully it will chase away some of the nightmares I've been having. I mentioned the one where I get sucked back in to helping with an election campaign but there have also been reruns of some of the work I do in some of the assignments I have had in the other industry in which I work. Some of the really nasty characters keep rearing up from then and the one supervisor I had for most of the time I have posted to you, dear diary, keeps appearing too. It is as though in real time he has an assignment in mind that he wants to call me about but is not certain how I will respond to his call. Truth is I don't know. It seems to have links to the last assignment I had where he wasn't my supervisor but also to the one company where I had three assignments while working with him and the other company where I worked on international data. That could just be because I am paying very close attention to political activities in those countries right now too I suppose. Don't know.
Anyway time for bed. I need to be up and pursuing landlords early tomorrow. Good night dear diary.
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